Monsoon Blues

The next day, full of resolve, Natuski stepped into the club room. Today would be the day she finally got her writing back on track-

“N-N-Natsuki!” Yumiko exclaimed right as Natsuki entered. She grabbed both of Natsuki’s shoulders and shook her sensely. “Natsuki Natsuki Natuski-”

“What what what-”

“Problem!” Yumiko yelped.

She gestured toward the club room. “Chair - sit!”

Natsuki found her desk and did as instructed.

“Phone - look!”

Yumiko held her phone up and Natsuki did as instructed. Her face immediately went red and steam came out of her ears.

Looking confused, Yumiko looked at her screen. She turned scarlet, mumbled about a wrong text, then pulled up the correct screen.

“From Masako,” Natsuki realized. She read the text aloud. “Hi Yumiko! I’ll be back to school tomorrow. I hope Natsuki’s been keeping up with her writing and you with your schoolwork! Otherwise, there’ll be hell to pay :).”

“I can’t afford hell!” Yumiko concluded. She paced around the club room. “Usually I do my schoolwork during club time, but I haven’t done anything during club time these past two days!”

Natsuki nodded vigorously. “Me too! I haven’t done any writing.”

Yumiko wiped her face. “I’ve failed as Acting President! Quick, how much money do you have on you? We can book flights out of Narita and skip town by sunset tonight!”

“W-wait!” Natsuki cried out as Yumiko started packing her bookbag. “Let’s just do our work now! If we work hard, I bet Masako will be happy with that.”

Yumiko leapt over and took Natsuki’s hands in her own. “You’re a genius!”

She then pointed at the names at that board. “Aristotle got everything about friction completely wrong, but in this quote that Masako quoted that I quoted, he was completely right! It’s so simple! We just have to work hard today-”

The sudden roar of thunder made both girls shiver. They looked out the window - the rainy season continued in full force, raindrops falling relentlessly, the sky outside still dark and foreboding.

The sight of the rain and darkness made both girls feel sleepy. Yumiko stifled a yawn, then grinned.

“Hey, Natsuki, guess what?”

Natsuki actually did yawn, then shook her head to keep herself awake. “What?”

“...grosery list.”

Both girls were quiet for a moment, then let out low, dumb-sounding laughs.

“Grosery list,” Natsuki repeated, bringing out another round of laughter.

Yumiko turned to the board. “You know, Masako’s absence is why I could pull that eraser in the door trick on you the other day. She wouldn’t allow stuff like that.” Her grin darkened. “And she wouldn’t allow something like this.”

Using a marker, she furiously scribbled something on the board. She then stepped away and gestured at it.

Natsuki let out another dumb laugh when she saw that Yumiko wrote PISS on the board.

“Want to try?” Yumiko asked, extending the marker out to her.

Natsuki looked around, making sure no teachers were nearby. She then looked at her book bag, where her laptop was waiting for her, ready to be filled up with today’s daily dose of writing.

I musn’t! Natsuki reminded herself. I need to focus-

But then she thought of something funny. She stepped toward the board, taking the marker from Yumiko.

When Natsuki finished writing, the girls laughed again.

“Poop,” Yumiko read aloud.

“Piss.”

“Grosery list.”

“How did we spend three hours doing that!” Natsuki cried out three hours later. “We wasted today’s entire club session!”

The girls arrived at the front of the school lobby, the rain pouring just outside. Yumiko squatted, her arms folded on top of her knees, her face buried in them.

“Masako told me about this once,” she glumly explained. “Motivation and discipline. You need both to accomplish something. You can be motivated to do something all you want, but if you can’t find the discipline to just sit down and do it, then it doesn’t get done.”

Yumiko shifted her head to look up at Natsuki. “At least you’re already one step ahead of me. You have the motivation to write, you just have to find the discipline. For school work, I don’t have either.”

Yumiko collapsed onto her back and bawled her fists. 

"Autumn already passing.

In the cold drizzle-

A waning moon..."

Natsuki scratched her arm with downcast eyes as she looked at her helpless friend. But then she realized something.

A spiral into giving up, complete with a quote from classic literature…who does that remind me of?

She gasped.

Me! Yumiko is me right now…and that means I have to be her Mitsuko.

“You need to be…a mighty animal,” Natsuki said, trying to imitate her best friend. That got Yumiko to quiet down at least, but she looked up at Natsuki in confusion.

“We’ve…we’ve had discipline for the first few weeks of school, right?” Natsuki told her. “It’s because Masako was there. She was the one who kept us on track and focused. So, tonight…we need to be our own Masakos. We need to be the ones who keep ourselves on track.”

Yumiko slowly nodded.

“You said you like to watch anime at home, right?” Natsuki asked. “Maybe instead of watching anime tonight, you do your school work. And I can tell my sister I have something important to do so I’ll catch up with her by the time the fourth inning of tonight’s game starts.”

Yumiko rolled over and looked away. “But you want to write. I don’t want to do school work.”

God, am I really this difficult?

Natsuki already had a great deal of respect for Mitsuko, but she found that respect growing by the minute. Continuing to copy her friend, she knelt down next to Yumiko. “Give it your best shot, Yumiko. I don’t know anything about cram school yet…but you can at least do your homework, right?”

Yumiko sighed and sat up. “Look at me. Getting comforted by my own junior.”

Natsuki extended a hand; Yumiko took it and Natsuki hoisted her to her feet.

“For Aristotle,” Yumiko proclaimed.

Natsuki nodded. “For Masako.”

“For grosery list.”

The two girls laughed again, then shook their heads.

“For discipline!” they exclaimed in unison.

….......

When Natsuki got home, she immediately put her umbrella away, kicked off her loafers, and marched toward her room.

Her younger sister Fuyuki stood in their kitchen, stirring a pot on a hot stove. She was a shorter version of Natsuki, with her hair a lighter shade of brown.

“Welcome home, Natsuki!” she called out.

Natsuki kept her eyes ahead of her. “Hi, Fuyuki! But I’m in focus mode right now!”

Fuyuki smiled. “I see. Do your best! Dinner will be ready soon!”

“Aye aye!” Natsuki decided to accomplish her usual post-club tasks as quickly as possible.

“Math!” she exclaimed as she did her homework of calculating x’s and y’s.

“English!” she exclaimed as she translated several pages of a textbook.

“Science!” she exclaimed as she wrote down the definition of the different organelles.

“Dinner!” she exclaimed when it was all finished. She glanced at the clock - two hours had already gone by, just like that.

Their parents were away on an overseas work assignment for the foreseeable future, so it would just be Fuyuki and Natsuki at the dinner table for tonight. Fuyuki ate calmly while Natsuki wolfed down her plate.

“Are you still in focus mode?” Fuyuki asked.

Natsuki slammed an entire glass of milk in one go. “Affirmative! Your older sister gave herself a task she needs to complete!”

Fuyuki clapped. “That’s great! I got the bath ready while you were working!”

“Bath!” Natsuki exclaimed as she lowered herself into hot water. She decided to clean as efficiently as possible, ignoring the temptations to veg out in there. Visions of funny internet pictures swirled around in her head, but she clenched her fists, trying to plot out tonight’s writing.

“Dressed!” Natsuki exclaimed as she threw on a t-shirt and shorts in her room. When she went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water, she noticed Fuyuki watching the night’s baseball game. She had no idea how to explain to her sister that she would have to forego their usual tradition for most of that night.

Fuyuki noticed her forlorn look. “Don’t let me stop you! You said you have something important to do.”

“Fuyuki…” Natsuki wiped her eyes, then got serious. “You’re right!”

Fuyuki waved goodbye with a pleasant smile as Natsuki returned to her room. She shut the door behind her, then started shadow-boxing. “Treat practice like a match and a match like practice!”

With that, she turned on her computer, pulled open her word doc containing the ballad of Time Cop so far…and stared blankly at the screen.

She scratched her head. I can start so easily in the club room…

Natsuki looked around her room. She saw her Fudge Sundae posters, her Miyazawa Sparrows baseball season schedule, and her own unmade bed. She shook her head and looked back at the screen and inadvertently started looking at baseball highlights.

I see. I just want to play and goof off right now. There are actually a lot more distractions in my own room than at school.

What would Masako say right now?

Just write.

Natsuki turned off her phone, closed out all the other screens, and took a good look at the word doc. She took a deep breath and replayed the scene she wanted to write in her head.

Just write.

Her fingers moved clumsily. The words came out messily, just a few at a time. But the words did come out, and Natsuki found herself getting into the groove. She still typed and wrote slowly, but the writing picked up, she found herself immersed in the scene, and even the sound of rain from outside slipped away as writing took up her entire consciousness.

….......

When the game ended, Fuyuki yawned and stretched. Her sister stayed in her room for the whole game, but that was alright. It sounded like she was working on something important to her, which also made it important to Fuyuki.

The sisters shared a room, so Fuyuki stepped carefully inside, not wanting to interrupt or disturb Natsuki. Instead, she found her older sister's head slumped on an empty patch of her desk. When Fuyuki glanced at the computer screen, she found pages and pages of writing.

Carefully, Fuyuki set the computer to sleep mode (after saving the word doc, of course). She didn’t look at the writing; she knew her sister was sensitive about things like this. Natsuki would show her when she felt ready.

Fuyuki smiled and draped a blanket over her sleeping sister.